I recently came across an article from a business leader who I respect. Within the first paragraph, I was assaulted by a wave of em dashes, three-item lists, and “it’s not just this, it’s that” comparisons. These are tell-tale signs that the article wasn’t written by a human, but was AI generated.

I’m sure the article contained good information, but as hard as I tried, I just couldn’t get through it.

That experience is, unfortunately, not unique to blog posts. I find that when I’m watching Reels, reading newsletters, and (especially) reading tweets or LinkedIn posts, my brain is constantly scanning to filter out AI slop.
In a way, that’s a huge opportunity for those of us who still take the time to put our own ideas and creativity into the content we’re sharing with the world.

AI can absolutely make our workflows more efficient, but in a world flooded with AI-generated content, human creativity is now the rare thing people are actually hungry for.

That made me think: A lot of people have been lobbying for AI-generated content to get a label that would let viewers know how it was created. But what if that’s the wrong approach?

What if, like organic produce, we earned a seal of authenticity when the content we create comes entirely from our brains? The organic label builds trust and commands a premium price. I believe that people are similarly willing to give more of their attention and trust to content that they know came from a real person.

So What?


My point is not that we should waste our time lobbying Big Tech or politicians to introduce an “organic content” initiative. Instead, there are ways to signal to our audiences that what they’re consuming is free from AI contamination, and I believe we will be rewarded for it.

For example: Casey Newton, the creator of tech news website Platformer, admitted on his podcast that he often writes with a specific tone that is clearly not AI, in order to differentiate his work from bot-created content. He said he uses weird jokes and personal asides to act like a ‘watermark’ of sorts.

What other ways could we watermark our human-generated content? I took a look at a sample of high-performing videos, articles, and posts to identify what they had in common that differentiates them from the slop, and found four common themes we can incorporate into our own work:

  1. First-person anecdotes 
  2. Humour in unexpected places (AI is still pretty terrible at jokes)
  3. Internal data or numbers from our own work
  4. Counter-intuitive hot takes or controversial opinions we genuinely believe


These are all ways to fight back against generic AI content; However, I’m sure you know by now that we’re big fans of AI for productivity. Using AI as a writing assistant isn’t the same as publishing AI-generated output. By all means, put your bots to work to gather research, give you feedback, or organize your workflow so you’re not repeating tasks. But when it comes to the good stuff (the part where humans are connecting with humans), keep that sacred.

The next time you’re planning anything, whether it’s video, text, or even an image, consider: what can you bring to this piece that only you could produce? What would clearly signal to your audience that they’re hearing from you, and not a generic AI output?

I, for one, will be much more likely to read/watch to the end if I know it came from you.